Comparing Military Operations In Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War, and Korean War

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The ways in which the United States has conducted its military operations since becoming an independent nation has largely depended upon the overall political and military objectives of each individual conflict. The United States first three hot wars after the end of World War II display the marked difference in US objectives and the operations used to achieve them better than any other modern wars in which American troops participated.

By and large the Korean War, Vietnam War, and Persian Gulf War had virtually no similarities, particularly in the ways in which each was fought. These differences lay largely in the technology available at the time of each conflict as well as the over all world situation in which they occurred. If any distinct similarity can be found in the types of military operations in which the United States engaged it occurs in the scope of the actions that each of the initial presidents took in determining how large of a war would be fought. In all three cases, at least in the initial phases, combat was deliberately limited, fought for the purpose of maintain regional balance. In the case of the Korean War President Truman and many of his advisors sought to engage in limited military operations with the intent of avoiding enraging either China or the Soviet Union from becoming directly involved in military operations in the theater. Truman sought to focus on the most basic principle of his own Truman Doctrine, containing communism rather than directly engaging in a full-scale war against its greatest powers. That being the case, the initial goal simply to push the invading North Koreans back beyond the 38th Parallel which official divided North and South Korea. It was only after the overwhelming success of...

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...s differed most significantly between the Gulf War and Korea was that in the Persian Gulf War President George H.W. Bush and (with the assistance of many of his advisors) was able to resist the calls, and the urge, to push operations beyond their originally defined parameters. When presented with the choice of whether or not to overstep the agreed upon goal of liberating Kuwait. It was this decision, to keep the war limited, that Truman could not follow through with, that made military operations in the Gulf War so successful. Though American forces had torn through the Iraqi Republican Guard, if Bush had succumb to public and military pressure to remove Hussein from power, a fate he had earned, the United States would have been mired in the quagmire that American forces were stuck in for nearly eight years after removing Hussein from power in the Second Iraq War.

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